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Friday, July 12, 2013

Month 11 Day 12

Notebook entry

15 reports given, trip to Fiddlers Green and Nawa.

Journal entry

Served as the lead
vic in the convoy from Dwyer to Fiddler's Green.
We made pretty good time, doing about 30 MPH through the desert most
of the way, but when we got there I found out that I had broken a
shock. That was annoying. We took a tour around Fiddler's Green.
The
Marines caughed up a bunch of tents for the ANA to live in temporarily
until their more permanent tents (base-in-a-box) were built. Some of
those were going up but the Marines complained about the quality of
the contracting, they literally had a 12 year old kid working on the
electrical grid.

We had lunch there and the General talked about how important all of
the different staff sections were. After the lunch I went to meet the
kandak S2 and the two S2 sergeants. Here's the funny thing, they have
guys assigned, but because of the way that Artillery treats intel
guys, there was only one guy, a LCpl in the S2 shop for 1/12, the
officer was doing some type of op in Kajaki. None of the S2 guys had
gone to school and they really didn't have any communication with the
outside world for the time being they didn't have cell boosters and
they didn't have a radio.

We moved on from there to the merry-go-round area, a crazy little town
where the kids will try to climb onto your trucks to steal stuff.
This is one time that it is good to have the ANA around because they
will tear the kids off, smack them and call all of the adults bad
muslims. Anyway, we went through there to Geronimo.

A lot has changed on Geronimo, we are staying in what was a COC until
a few months ago. They have a brand new huge CCOC. They really have
the AFghans in there with them, they have offices immediately accross
from them. It really looks impressive, but there are no Afghans
assigned to the intel section here, so they have no one to partner
with.

We went to a brief by the kandak XO that described in detail what the
kandak was facing. It was actually a good brief. It broke down the
areas where various TB commanders worked, talked about the Areas,
Structures, Capabilities of Government, Organizations and Equipment.
A lot of the information was verbatim copied from the Legacy GSG2 guy
here who seems to be really on his game. Unfortunately, again they
IDed logistical shortfalls (no fuel, oil, spare parts) as the primary
reason for concern. Since the contract has been taken over by ATemp,
and their job is to use the ANA system and since the system is broken,
no parts are available. The team down here has been buying oil and
lubricants on the economy to fill the gap. This is IDed as a
shortfall because it is tangible while the total absence of an S2
section was not mentioned. I don't know how much of that was in turn
copied from US forces. In the empty ANA S2 office that the Marines
built in the Combined COC, there were already maps in Dari, pictures
of HVIs, etc around. I wonder how much of this is window-dressing.
Talking to Lt Phippen, the S2 mentor down here, he's still working on
the basics with them, map reading, weather analysis etc.

Went down to eat with the General and his entourage. He was playing
volleyball (or "wallyball" as they humorously call it). We had to sit
down and wait for about an hour to get any food. The food was pretty
good. It was a bit rude, but I was having a good time talking to
LaFranchi, so I did not really talk to the Afghans. We talked about
life, our mutual mental dysfunctions, finances, and our wives. They
had the fried potatoes that I like so much, then we were off.